Kings Theatre four stars When Samuel Beckett's second radio play was aired in 1959, notions of conceptual art and installations were in their relative infancy. Yet, as Pan Pan Theatre's sonic and visual interpretation makes clear, this is exactly what Beckett was doing in a work which literally gets inside a man's mind. Onstage, strings of little speakers hang down, surrounding a shrouded structure which looks not unlike a giant bird-cage after dark. Once unveiled, this is revealed as a giant skull, from inside which two actors rake over the ashes of one man's past. As an opening piano overture melds into the sounds of the sea and the dense interior monologue which emerges from it, Gavin Quinn's production presents theatre as art installation. At its centre is Andrew Clancy's skull sculpture, across which Aedin Cosgrove's complex lighting patterns rise and fall, offering tantalising glimpses of actors Andrew Bennett and Aine Ni Mhuiri inside
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.